nderstanding languages, knowing future
events, discovering the purposes of others, recognising human souls when
enclosed in new bodies, Apollonius merely professes extreme penetration
and extraordinary acquaintance with nature. The spell by which he evokes
spirits and exorcises demons, implies the mere possession of a
secret;[344] and so perfectly is his biographer aware of this, as almost
to doubt the resuscitation of the Roman damsel, the only decisive
miracle of them all, on the ground of its being supernatural,
insinuating that perhaps she was dead only in appearance.[345]
Accordingly, in the narrative which we have extracted above, he begins
by saying that she "seemed to have died," or "was to all appearance
dead;" and again at the end of it he speaks of her "seeming death."
Hence, moreover, may be understood the meaning of the charge of magic,
as brought against the early Christians by their heathen adversaries;
the miracles of the Gospels being strictly interruptions of physical
order, and incompatible with theurgic knowledge.[346]

When our Lord and His Apostles declare themselves to be sent from God,
this claim to a divine mission illustrates and gives dignity to their
profession of extraordinary power; whereas the divinity,[347] no less
than the gift of miracles to which Apollonius laid claim, must be
understood in its Pythagorean sense, as referring not to any intimate
connection with a Supreme Agent, but to his partaking, through his
theurgic skill, more largely than others in the perfections of the
animating principle of nature.

6.

4. Yet, whatever is understood by his miraculous gift and his divine
nature, certainly his works were not adduced as vouchers for his
divinity, nor were they, in fact, the principal cause of his reputation.
What we desiderate is a contemporary appeal to them, on the part of
himself or his friends; as St. Paul speaks of his miracles to the Romans
and Corinthians, even calling them in one place "the signs of an
Apostle;" or as St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, details the
miracles of both St. Peter and St. Paul.[348] Far different is it with
Apollonius: we meet with no claim to extraordinary power in his Letters;
nor when returning thanks to a city for public honours bestowed on him,
nor when complaining to his brother of the neglect of his townsmen, nor
when writing to his opponent Euphrates.[349] To the Milesians, indeed,
he speaks of earthquakes which he had predicte